If Google has become synonymous with search, Wikipedia is synonymous with information. It's where students look for quick answers, for confirmation of what they know, and answers to what they don't. It is, in many ways, synonymous with the internet; one of the first sites you encounter when you search for what you don't know.

Of course, for every user who finds something they need is a user who makes a hilarious edit to a Wiki entry, simply because they can.

Whatever your usage, it's impossible to deny that Wikipedia has filled a void even Google couldn't.

With Google, you ask a question and get choices. With Wikipedia, you get answers. Not always the most precise one, but one that frequently serves the purpose - or at least as a starting point. Yes, the info on Wikipedia isn't to be taken blindly - and quoting Wikipedia is a no-no (especially in academic circles) - but it makes a great place to find references to explore on any subject.

Its power and influence are undeniable - small wonder it's one of the most-viewed sites around the world, as it aims to explain everything the world wants to know.

How does it explain itself? Here's the Wiki entry on Wikipedia:

"Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour."

15 years and counting

It's hard, when one looks at the sheer scale of information Wikipedia has come to represent, to believe it's just 15 years old: this is one know-it-all teen. Launched on 15 January, 2001 by two internet pioneers, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, their concept of the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit - crowdsourcing expertise long before the word crowdsourcing became a buzzworld - is today the 10th most popular site in the world, is available in 280 different languages and contains around 35 million articles.

Three things have helped Wikipedia hit this insane scale. First, people are willing to participate in community-related activities for absolutely nothing. Second, they correctly anticipated the surge in internet usage over the years. And third, they knew that the more users write articles, the more useful the site becomes.

That was always going to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, allowing anyone to edit an article is dangerous in many ways. Take for example the 2006 incident in which several congressional members were caught editing their own Wikipedia entries (a complete no-no) to cast themselves in a more favourable light. On the other hand, allowing more users to edit enriches them with expertise outside the reach of any organisation or institution - and, equally importantly, allows it to run ad-free.

Speaking of volunteers, there are over 100,000 of them registered as editors - and more than 80,000 make at least five edits per month.

That's a collaborative exercise like virtually none other on the planet - and for all the debate about inaccuracy, it's not too often wrong either.

A 2005 study by Nature found Wikipedia's science entries came close to matching the Encyclopaedia Britannica's in terms of accuracy - with 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.

As Wikipedia turns 15, here's looking back at all those years through numbers.

There are currently 5,056,838 articles on the site, which means 2,983,534,420 words, which means 17,901,206,520 characters.

The text of the English Wikipedia is currently equivalent to 2,237.7 volumes of the Encylcopaedia Britannica.

According to Pew research, Wikipedia now includes about 280 languages and averages more than 18 billion page views in a month, making it one of the world's most visited websites.

Most edited articles per year:

From 2007-2015, Deaths In [Year] was the most edited every year, so we've included the second most edited as well.

Sahil is a correspondent at Catch. A gadget freak, he loves offering free tech support to family and friends. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College, New York and worked previously for Scroll. He selectively boycotts fast food chains, worries about Arsenal, and travels whenever and wherever he can. Sahil is an unapologetic foodie and a film aficionado.